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FRUGAL TRAVELER; Brazil's Wildlife, Right Outside Your Lodge Room

By SETH KUGEL

Published: October 23, 2011

The Transpantaneira Highway, despite its grand name, is an unfinished dirt road running 90 or so miles from the Brazilian town of Pocone into the Pantanal, a vast wetlands many consider South America's finest destination for animal viewing.

But it's not just a road: it's a crocodilian slalom course. As I jolted along in a rented Fiat Uno on a late August night, my headlights caught the glare of dozens of red eyes staring in the near pitch-black far ahead. They belonged to Yacare caimans, alligator cousins that had decided the road was a comfortable resting spot.

There are literally millions of caimans in the Pantanal, and they don't make way for anyone. So I weaved around them, remembering the story that the car rental agent had told me just a few hours earlier about the time he had to sleep in his truck because the road was so caiman-covered he couldn't get by.

I was luckier: minutes later, I was turning onto the road to Pousada Rio Clarinho, the first of two lodges I would stay at during my Pantanal trip. There were no more caimans, but the road through dense woods was winding and deeply rutted, slowing me to a bumpy crawl. I flipped on my high beams as I rounded a curve, slammed on the brakes and uttered a very loud, very profane expression of surprise.

Just 10 feet ahead lumbered the oddest animal I had ever seen.

Though it was maybe five feet long, there was barely any body: most of it was taken up by a tubelike snout in front and a bushy tail in back that Wilma Flintstone might have used to dust furniture.

I had spotted a rare giant anteater - and I hadn't even checked in.

Things only got better. Waiting for me at the lodge was a dinner of roast chicken, rice, beans and salad that was part of the package at Rio Clarinho, where I was paying 150 Brazilian reais a night (or $85 at 1.76 reais to the dollar). That included a rustic but survivable room, three meals a day and a personal tour guide.

The Pantanal lives in the shadow of the Amazon, its mammoth neighbor to the north. I love the Amazon for its rivers and villages, its exotic fruits and its vastness. But for budget travelers looking for wildlife, it can't compare to the Pantanal. Amazonian lodges are for the most part more expensive and farther from cities (and major airports), and the animals harder to spot - it's literally a jungle out there. In the Pantanal, the jaguars may be evasive, but the capybaras, the hyacinth macaws, the giant anteaters and the ring-tailed coatis will practically pose for you if you approach quietly.

In the geographic center of South America, the Pantanal spreads over tens of thousands of square miles of wide-open flood plains and tropical dry forests in Paraguay, Bolivia and (mostly) Brazil.

Vacationers heading to the Pantanal have lots of decisions to make: should they go south, flying into Campo Grande (as most budget travelers do) or north (as I did) through Cuiaba? Which is better, the dry season or the wet? (Most favor the dry season, April to September, with more animals and less mud.) And should they book tours in advance or go it on their own?

Most book tours. But I decided to go freelance, reserving my own rooms at the last minute, thus gaining some flexibility while saving additional tour charges. I'd have to skip out on expensive daylong boat excursions where the main purpose is to spot jaguars. But who needs jaguars when your welcoming committee includes a giant anteater?

Rio Clarinho was a bit shabby - its bathrooms could use an overhaul - but a likable, honest place. The owner, Afranio, told me that a 32-year-old Pantanal native named Tuca would be ''completely at my disposition'' as a guide for two days.

That's not a phrase I hear often as the Frugal Traveler. But it was wonderfully, amazingly true. Over the next day and a half, Tuca and I searched for wildlife on a day hike, a night hike, a horseback ride, a boat trip and a sunrise-viewing trip to a wooden tower rising above the trees on the property. We also went fishing with bamboo poles and chunks of meat that vultures would snatch up if we left the bait pail unattended.

Tuca didn't speak much English, but he had an amazing knack for tracking down animals. We came across capuchin monkeys and tamarins swinging through the trees, red-footed tortoises retracting into their shells, cutias (small rodents), marsh deer, Brazilian tapirs, a raccoonlike ringed-tail coati dashing across our path, and a small anteater called a Southern Tamandua climbing up a tree branch. Once, hearing a flutter of wings, Tuca said: ''Vultures. A jaguar killed something'' and began hacking his way into the brush with his machete. Sure enough, there was the carcass of a tapir under a cloud of flies. The jaguar, alas, was gone.

But the highlights came on our river excursion and nighttime walk. On the Clarinho river, we came across friendly giant otters, most of whom greeted us with a sound that the more immature might compare to a whoopee cushion. One was chomping down on a captured fish as if it were a candy bar.